Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Valentine Sugar Cookies - Fondant & Royal Icing

Fondant covered sugar cookies with royal icing and fondant accents

My granddaughter's school has to be one of the few schools around that still allow treats to be brought in from home. A few weeks ago, she placed her order for Valentine cookies. She told me there are twenty-two kids in her grade four class, but I better make her twenty-five - "just in case". Just in case she eats a few before they get to the classroom, I suppose.

My Pinterest feed is filled with fabulous brightly coloured cookies that are meticulously decorated with royal icing. I really wanted to give royal icing one more shot. You see, royal icing and I are NOT friends. This goes way back to long before I started decorating cakes and such. One Easter, I decided to make my own kids cookies shaped like Easter Eggs and bunnies. To this day, in the Martha Stewart cookbook on the page with the royal icing recipe is a post-it note that says, "Don't do it!!! Remember last year!?!"

Attempt at decorating with royal icing

Nevertheless, I decided to try again.

Sigh. Two hours later, my kitchen looked like a disaster zone with squeeze bottles all over the place, and tips, and long needles for spreading the icing, and bowls of royal icing in different colours and in varying consistencies. I still couldn't get it right. I tried the outlining method and didn't like the look. So, I tried doing it all in one shot with a thinner icing. That didn't work for me either.

In the end, I scrapped the whole idea and went back to my trusty fondant covered cookies with royal icing and fondant accents. I'm happy and I am guessing that my granddaughter and her class will be happy too.

Will I try decorating with royal icing again? You bet - probably at Easter! I will get the hang of it one of these times!

About Me

After much prompting from family and friends, I have finally created a blog in order to share my passion for creating cakes, cupcakes, cakepops, etc. I stumbled upon cake decorating when my grandson turned one. I offered to make his cake without really knowing what I was doing.
That was three years ago and I have come a long way since that purple and turquoise caterpillar!
I have taken several courses. I've purchased and read dozens of cake books and magazines, and I have spent countless hours on the computer looking at cake designs and recipes.
Taking an idea and turning it into an edible piece of art has become my passion.
That's not to say it's all about looks! I have learned what an incredible difference quality ingredients can make. There is nothing like the taste, texture and smell of freshly creamed butter, sugar and real vanilla bean. Mmmmm.